About Catch Signal and how it works
Catch Signal is a free, non-commercial fishing forecast for the South East Queensland coast, with species guides for all of South East Queensland. It rates each day for shore, small-boat and kayak fishing from open weather and tide data, and it shows its working.
Updated
What does Catch Signal do?
It answers two questions for people who fish from the shore, a small boat or a kayak: which days this week are worth going, and when in the day to be there. Each day gets a verdict (Excellent, Good, Fair or Poor, or a gate such as No-go when the weather rules it out), a best time of day, the species worth targeting and how to fish for them, with the current size and bag limits.
The forecast currently covers 19 coastal areas: Noosa, Laguna Bay, Mooloolaba, Caloundra, Bribie Island, Scarborough, Sandgate, Brisbane River, Tangalooma, Manly, Cleveland, Redland Bay, Jumpinpin, Broadwater, Burleigh, Point Lookout, Mooloolaba offshore, Cape Moreton offshore and Gold Coast offshore, plus 12 dams as a conditions-only freshwater beta. Alongside it are species guides for 39 South East Queensland species, tide times and fishing spots.
How is a fishing day rated?
A day's score is built only from things that change from day to day and can be measured. Solunar periods add nothing to the score: there is little evidence that they predict catches. The parts and their maximum points:
| Part | Max points | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Wind and chop | 30 | How hard and from which way it blows during the fishable part of the day (dawn and dusk, three hours either side). For shore fishing it uses the most sheltered listed spot. |
| Tide in prime light | 25 | Whether the tide stage your target species prefer lines up with dawn or dusk in daylight, and whether the daylight tide range is at least the fortnight's median. |
| Rain, runoff and clarity | 15 | Heavy rain in the two days before dawn muddies the water; rain during the session costs points too. |
| Season and species fit | 15 | How well the best species in season suits the day. A species in its closed season is never counted. |
| Weekday crowding | 5 | Weekdays that aren't Queensland public holidays: quieter ramps, walls and jetties. |
| Moon | 3 | A small nudge within a day and a half of new or full moon, only when snapper or pelagics are in season. |
| Pressure trend | 3 | A small nudge when the barometer is falling ahead of a change. |
| Solunar periods | 0 | Folklore: never scored. |
The parts add up to 96 points, rescaled to 100. Days further ahead are less certain, so their weather parts are pulled toward the usual value for the month, a little more for every day of lead time.
When does a day become No-go?
Safety gates are checked before any score, separately for the dawn and the dusk fishing windows. A day takes the gate of its better window, and a storm or blow in the other one is flagged. A thunderstorm risk from at least 30% of the weather models, or a gale, makes a window No-go for everyone. For shore fishing, No-go is an upper-range model wind of 26 knots or more (strong-wind-warning strength), and Marginal is when even the most sheltered listed spot would still face 16 knots or more. A small boat inside the bay goes No-go above 15 knots, or with gusts of 25 knots or more, or waves over a metre; a kayak above 12 knots, or with waves of half a metre or more.
Bar crossings, open water, ocean rocks and lake status can only make a day stricter, never better, and nothing on Catch Signal calls a day safe. Always check the official forecasts and warnings before you go.
What do Excellent, Good, Fair and Poor mean?
A label is a day's score compared with the same spot's own history for that month and that way of fishing, not a fixed scale. Every day from 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2025 was re-rated with the same code, on archived forecasts from the weather models the live forecast blends. Days that pass the safety gates set the cut-offs: the top tenth are Excellent, the next fifth Good, the middle two-fifths Fair and the rest Poor.
| Mode | Days without a gate | In-sample | Leave one year out | Out of sample (Jan–Sep 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shore | 1,068 of 1,096 | 10.1% | 10.0% | 8.7% |
| Small boat | 542 of 1,096 | 9.2% | 10.1% | 9.5% |
| Kayak | 277 of 1,096 | 8.7% | 9.0% | 14.8% (only 61 days) |
So an Excellent day comes round about once in ten days without a gate. For a small boat or a kayak that is far fewer of all days, because many days fail their gates. Out of sample means January to September 2026, days the cut-offs were not built from. Every other coastal area is calibrated the same way on its own 2023–2025 history. The dams never get these labels: they show conditions only, not a bite forecast.
How is the best time of day chosen?
Within a day, every hour is ranked against the other hours of that day only: light counts for 35%, the tide stage your target species prefer 35%, how fast the tide is running 15% and the hour's wind and chop 15%. The best two- to three-hour windows are shown. Hours that hit a No-go limit are blocked, and a No-go day offers no best time at all.
What is automated, and what is checked by hand?
Automated: the weather forecast, a consensus of 8 global models from Open-Meteo (6 at full weight) that our server fetches and caches for everyone; tide times converted from Maritime Safety Queensland's published predictions; sunrise, sunset and moon phase calculated with standard astronomical formulas; and the ratings themselves, worked out in your browser.
Checked by hand: fishing rules (our local Redcliffe Peninsula notes checked 7 Oct 2026, South East Queensland guide checked 8 Oct 2026), spot positions from official open data (checked 8 Oct 2026; the ten original Scarborough spots come from our own research, partly from OpenStreetMap, checked 7 Oct 2026), marine park zones (checked 7 Oct 2026), and the species notes, written in our own words from public sources. Bar and open-water limits are our own estimates and are labelled that way, because Maritime Safety Queensland publishes no numbers.
These guide pages are generated from the same data the app uses. The date at the top of each page changes only when its content does.
Who pays for it?
Nobody. Catch Signal is a free, non-commercial project from Scarborough on the Redcliffe Peninsula, with no ads, no subscriptions and no affiliate or sponsored links. The weather data is used under Open-Meteo's free, non-commercial terms, and staying non-commercial is a condition of using it.
Where does the data come from?
- Weather and sea forecasts: Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), with models from ECMWF, NOAA, DWD, the UK Met Office, the Canadian Meteorological Centre and the China Meteorological Administration.
- Tide predictions: Maritime Safety Queensland's published predictions on data.qld.gov.au (for example the Scarborough tide gauge predicted high/low data), for Scarborough Boat Harbour and its other stations (Noosa Head, Mooloolaba, Tangalooma, Deep Water Bend, Shorncliffe, Brisbane Bar, Pinkenba/Gateway, Port Office, Gold Coast Seaway and Southport), CC BY 4.0. Places between stations use MSQ's published semidiurnal tidal planes, adapted by Catch Signal.
- Measured water levels: the Queensland Government's Coastal Data System near real time tide data (CC BY 4.0).
- Marine park zones: Moreton Bay Marine Park zoning data (CC BY 4.0), simplified and a guide only: check the official zoning maps and app before you fish.
- Fishing rules: Queensland size and possession limits and closed seasons, summarised and dated, with links to the official pages.
- Local fishing reports: the weekly Coastwatch fishing report, as facts only (date, shop and the species mentioned) with a link; its text is never republished.
- Bureau of Meteorology forecasts are linked, never copied, reworded or stored.
Every source, licence and disclaimer is on Sources and disclaimers. Photo licences are listed on Photo credits.
Spotted a mistake?
Rules change and spots move. If something is wrong or out of date, email hello@catchsignal.com.au.